What’s red white and blue and flies 600 miles-an-hour? The United States Air Force Thunderbirds. They’re in Sacramento for the California Capital Air Show.

The United States Air Force Thunder Birds are in Sacramento this
weekend for the California Capital Air Show.

There's nothing quite like the noise of an F-16 flying by. And
at 600 miles-per-hour, they're hard to track. If you're
trying to find one based on the sound, you're likely looking way
behind it.

Lieutenant Colonel Jason Koltes is one of the pilots flying in
this week's practice sessions, "There's about 45 different
formations that the guys will fly and each one of them will require
a different position by each player."

This weekend, he'll be directing traffic from the
ground, "Some of the formation's are just movements of a
couple of inches that put you in the right spot and as a formation
changes or passes in front of the crowd or in front of a show
center marking some of the formations change as well."

Koltes says this is one of those things where you can't have
enough practice, "From the middle of November to the middle of
March every year -that's our training season. And it's twice
a day just as many sorties as we can fly to get new pilots
upgraded. And then from there, every week, we have to fly
four demonstrations or practices to keep the currency. And
it's a skill flying the formations that deteriorates very
quickly. So, it's very critical to keep that practice
up."

The weather should cooperate and allow the Thunderbirds to
show off their full array of maneuvers.

Besides the Thunderbirds, there will be two dozen other
performers -including vintage World War II planes, fixed wing
aircraft and, down on the ground, a jet car race. Organizers
say about 50,000 people turned out for the show last year.